More Info on Aaron Schock

Aaron Schock is the newest—and youngest at 27 years old—member of the incoming Congressional class. It took some work to dig up anything about him.

His campaign website is devoid of anything resembling position statements, and instead contains your average smattering of broad, meaningless platitudes. 

Here’s what I do know about Aaron, now:

• Aaron will be representing IL-18, a lean-Republican district encompassing Peoria (Cook PVI R+5), with a 90.8% white population, and a 6.5% African-American population, and a completely middle-of-the-road average income (about $42,000, ranking it #222 out of 435 CDs) [Watchdog and Wikipedia]. Still, he cut at least one TV ad pushing very, very hard for the African-American community's vote [YouTube].
• Aaron suggested last year that we should sell nuclear weapons to Taiwan if China didn't go along with our policy on Iran. Here's the money quote: "If China continues to be irresponsible about nuclear proliferation in Iran, we should tell them that if they do not care about proliferation — and since they are enablers of it in Iran — that if they don’t change their position, we will sell Pershing nuclear missiles to Taiwan for their defense."
• Aaron accepted contributions from your typical array of Republican donor-sources: NRA, Big Oil, credit and banking firms, etc.
• Aaron voted against a law that would have repealed Illinois' absolute requirement for parental notification of abortion.
• Aaron voted against allowing stem cell research while banning human cloning.
• Aaron received a score of 25 from the Illinois Civil Justice League, a 44 and a 20, respectively, for the Illinois Environmental Council and Illinois League of Conservation Voters, but he did receive an A from the NRA. Astonishingly, he voted in the interests of the AFL-CIO 51% of the time.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Aaron’s website:

The accomplishments of the Republican Majority in Congress since 1994 are astonishing and every American lives a better life today because of those changes made with that historic majority.

via Illinois House Freshman Says He Is Disappointed by Burris - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com.